Forget New Year’s Resolutions – Do a Year-End Review

If you really want to resolve to accomplish something and truly make a commitment with yourself, then you need to create an environment for long-term success. This means adopting GTD and incorporating your desired outcome into your trusted system.

I recommend you do a “Year-End Review” to reflect on last year and project into next year. Then if something comes out of that self-reflection that you really are willing to commit to, then incorporate it into your system and work your system every week via the weekly review. By using this approach (as opposed to a new year’s resolution) you will have a much better chance of long-term success.

The year-end review is similar to a weekly review but at a much higher level. Here are the questions I ask myself:

Looking back on 2012:

What were my wins or successful outcomes for the year?

What were the risks I took and looking back on them were they worth it?

What unfinished business from 2012 do I have that will carry forward to 2013?

What was I most happy about completing?

Who were the people who had the greatest impact on my life this year?

What was my biggest surprise?

What did I give back to the community?

Looking forward to 2013:

What would I like my biggest win to be this year?

What am I planning to do to improve myself?

What would make me the most happy to complete in the coming year?

What one thing would I most like to change about myself?

What am I looking forward to learning?

What will my biggest risk be?

What am I most committed to changing and improving?

I also do a review of my calendar to see what worked and what I need to take a look at to improve in 2013. This will be the subject of my next post.